Beauty, purity and quality are the three guiding principles that have carried Japanese company YouKaEn from its humble beginnings to its present day pre-eminence in the field of creative floral design. Beauty is inherent in every flower, but it is the task of the designer to transcend this beauty and to create an object that is the perfect union of nature and human imagination, that is pure, refined and graceful. Yuji Kobayashi (born1963), one of the chief designers and executive manager at YouKaEn, needs no words to put this vision into practice. Flawless technique and the use of nothing but first class materials results in floral arrangements bordering on perfection. Symmetry is key in Kobayashi's arrangements presented in this book. Squares, triangles, circles and cylindrical designs are meticulously sketched out on paper and then executed with the greatest degree of precision. Take a peek into the mind of this exceptional artist and be amazed.